POL 338 - Energy Politics and the Climate Crisis

This course introduces students to the tangled politics of energy systems and the climate crisis. Through the lens of political economy, we will first examine the history and politics of hydrocarbon extraction, trade, governance, and consumption. Key areas of focus will be the industrial revolution, imperial struggles over oil in the Middle East, the formation of OPEC, and global production and trade networks built on massive energy consumption. We will think critically about how energy systems shape and are shaped by power struggles across class, race, and geography. In the second half of the course, we will consider the political pathways to a renewable energy system. Here, we will discuss political activism targeting hydrocarbon extraction, the enduring issue of climate debt, specifically climate reparations demanded by the global South, the effectiveness of market-based climate solutions, and the complexity of a just transition, with a focus on labor and resource politics.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): POL 220, POL 230, POL 240, POL 260, or POL 280.
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.